As the popularity and varieties of electronic devices continue to grow, it is not unusual for a person to have multiple devices at his disposal. For example, a person may have a personal computer (PC) and a tablet PC at home, a laptop for work, and a smartphone as his mobile device. With all these devices, there is often a need to transfer data, such as images, documents, and video clips, from one device to another device. For example, the person may want to view a video clip recorded on his smartphone on his PC. Similarly, the person may also want to share the video dip with his friends, which would require him to send the clip to his friends' devices. Thus, there is a great need for an efficient and intuitive way of sharing data among multiple devices.
Point-to-point communication mechanisms such as instant messaging (IM) have been around for a while. Existing IM applications, for example, provide a quick and convenient way for the users to communicate with each other and transfer data from one device to another device in real time. Typically, a first user logs into his account and uses the IM application on his device to send a message to a second user's account. The second user can log into his account on one of his devices and view the message without much delay. The message can include different types of data, such as text, image, and video/audio data. Depending on the type of the data being transmitted, the IM application may support one or more of the existing formats including, for example, text message, Short Message Service (SMS), Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), Video Messaging Service (VMS), etc.
However, there are a number of shortcomings of existing IM applications. For example, none offers its users the options of choosing when and/or on which device to receive incoming messages and data. Typically, the recipient receives the incoming message within a short period of time after the message was sent by the sender and the message is only received on the device being used by the recipient at the time of the message's arrival. This may be inconvenient for the user if, for example, a video clip is received on the recipient's mobile phone, but he would prefer to view it on his tablet PC instead. At the minimum, an additional step is required to transfer the video clip from the mobile phone to the tablet PC. This may require logging on to another device and opening up another messaging interface to download the video again, which can cause further delay and inconvenience for the user. Similarly, the recipient typically cannot delay the arrival of a message when online. This may be an issue when, for example, the recipient is working on a public PC in plain view of other people and would rather not have incoming messages displayed on the screen as they arrive. With current IM applications, he may have no choice but to turn the IM application off. In addition, if a message is deleted after being received on the recipient's device, there is no easy way to recover the message. For example, if the recipient wishes to watch the video in the deleted message again, he may have to ask the sender to resend the video.
It is, thus, desirable to have more efficient and user friendly account-based systems and methods for sharing data among multiple end user devices.